Michael Carter
Veteran
I've read too many web reviews of Nikon DSLRs that, when discussing formats, say something like "Don't mess with the Raw format, JPEG is all you need".
I shoot almost nothing but NEF... having complete control of the image as it hit the sensor is too good to pass up.
This is from a recent shoot: celebrity lighting-designers in lighting showrooms. I had to do a bunch of these in one day, so speed was essential. For this one, I wanted to hold all the practical light glows, so I had a color balance nightmare... it was really bright in there, with every possible color temp going on. I bounced a strobe from a nearby corner (with a full CTO gel) and used a 1/30 shutter at about f6. I color balanced for the LCD -- so it would look good for the client on that bright Nikon LCD. Since NEF doesn't change based on color balance, I was safe to correct these with Camera raw.
Here's the before:
And the after, using nothing but camera raw controls... a little curves or levels and this will be a pretty shot:
Camera raw rocks because it's non-destructive; and you can open files in 16-bit color space, which gives you even more quality for color correction and CMYK conversions. If you haven't played with it, give it a try.
I shoot almost nothing but NEF... having complete control of the image as it hit the sensor is too good to pass up.
This is from a recent shoot: celebrity lighting-designers in lighting showrooms. I had to do a bunch of these in one day, so speed was essential. For this one, I wanted to hold all the practical light glows, so I had a color balance nightmare... it was really bright in there, with every possible color temp going on. I bounced a strobe from a nearby corner (with a full CTO gel) and used a 1/30 shutter at about f6. I color balanced for the LCD -- so it would look good for the client on that bright Nikon LCD. Since NEF doesn't change based on color balance, I was safe to correct these with Camera raw.
Here's the before:
And the after, using nothing but camera raw controls... a little curves or levels and this will be a pretty shot:
Camera raw rocks because it's non-destructive; and you can open files in 16-bit color space, which gives you even more quality for color correction and CMYK conversions. If you haven't played with it, give it a try.
